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Keepsakes of a Satirist the DIARIES of DAWN POWELL 1931–1965 by Dawn Powell

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Keepsakes of a Satirist the DIARIES of DAWN POWELL 1931–1965 by Dawn Powell decisive battles such as Midway and not always impress their opponents (and Stalingrad hinged on a mixture of skill, has been doubted by some modern ana- courage, and sheer luck, he also affirms lysts). Likewise, his assertion that the Allies that they were decisive because they accel- won not least because their cause was just erated what was already a steepening looks fairly conventional. But even if decline in Axis material strength. He does Overy does not resolve all the puzzles and not suggest that the Germans could have paradoxes he raises, his incisive, persistent “won” at Stalingrad, even if they had interrogation of the inner structures of this reached the Volga. While this is not to say immense war makes this a uniquely chal- they were doomed, it comes rather close. lenging and rewarding account. Even the straw man of material determin- ism creeps into his description of the over- > Charles Townshend is professor of history at the whelming supply backup for American University of Keele. He is the author, most recently, of combat troops, whose “fighting power” did Britain’s Civil Wars (1986). Keepsakes of a Satirist THE DIARIES OF DAWN POWELL 1931–1965 By Dawn Powell. Edited and with a introduction by Tim Page. Steerforth. 513 pp. $32 by Richard Selzer ther than the ledger of a business, keeping, as if to stop would mean to die. Oa diary is the only book that is And who knows? Maybe it would. kept. The word implies faithfulness to the Call it prying, or prurience, but I con- task, as in keeping at it, even as it conveys fess my favorite literary genre is the diary. a sense of privacy, as in keeping a secret. It is the most direct route to an author, It also suggests the tending and marshal- and should that author be Dawn Powell, ing of thoughts that might wander away the entries are certain to be witty, acer- and be lost, as sheep would be, were it not bic, and touching. Only two years ago, for the shepherd who keeps them. The keep is also the deepest part of a castle, where the prisoners—in this instance, preferences, prejudices, urges, obses- sions, and humiliations—are locked up at the same time they are given voice. Private though the diarist’s announced intention may be, it is likely that she does not keep the diary for herself alone, but in the still, small hope of making contact with others, the way an astronomer keeps his great electronic ear cocked at the void, palpitating for faint evidence that we are not alone in the universe. What is this incessant keeping if not a hankering for companionship, for that one dearest reader who will give you license, without let or hindrance, to “unpack your heart with words”? There is pathos in this diary Current Books 77 the name Dawn Powell would have coming from or whether they will be elicited blank stares. Now, thanks to the evicted onto the street—like Powell her- whim of posterity and the resurrecting self. With all the borrowing and lending hand of Gore Vidal (who wrote an going on, Polonius would not have been overview of her work), this excellent tolerated in this crowd. Yet, like Powell, writer’s reputation has been restored. For these characters are gallant and dignified, some 40 years—from the 1920s to the never too broke to help a friend or relative 1960s—Powell lived in lower Manhattan in need. and situated her 15 satirical novels and many short stories there. It is hard to say owell’s friends and acquaintances which is more acute: her ear for speech, Pwere legion, and each is given a por- her eye for custom and habit, or her intu- trait, whether warmly compassionate or ition for the relationship between tragedy crackling with electricity. Truman and folly. Her fiction paints an incompa- Capote is of “the Southern Trash and rable portrait of her time: limited in its crème de menthe school as against the scope, perhaps, but impressive in its mint julep school.” Edmund Wilson depth of perception. It can certainly hold “appears to ask questions . but pays no its own with the work of such better- attention to the answers, though later known peers as Dorothy Parker and they emerge. Now that his mind has Muriel Spark. It is no longer possible to enlarged into such a vast organization, it’s make a study of 20th-century American as if conversation had to wait in the lobby literature without considering Powell. till the message has been routed through And now there is this superb edition of the proper department. Sometimes it has her diaries, unique among contemporary to come back Monday.” Stella Adler’s journals for its trenchant opinions and “precise features are . chiseled by a intimate views of many of the important dozen plastic surgeons . not one fold of figures of the time: Edmund Wilson, fat drips carelessly over the photogenic Ernest Hemingway, Mary McCarthy, silhouette”; the “Artless Blue” of her eyes John Dos Passos, Gore Vidal, Malcolm is “now diluted with years of venom, so Cowley, Franz Kline. that...a flash of flame darts out when the vanity is hurt.” n contrast with poems, plays, novels, Most affecting are the entries that per- Iand essays, a diary provides the writer tain to Powell’s only child, her son, JoJo. with occasions for natural braggadocio, From early childhood, JoJo was pro- whining, and spleen venting. Elsewhere, foundly ill with what was diagnosed as such indulgences might be faults; here, schizophrenia; grown to manhood, he they are pith. Besides, Dawn Powell is was permanently hospitalized. Yet even incapable of writing a clumsy sentence. here, Powell leavens her sorrow with She sparkles, hungry for experience, acute observation and brave humor—as inhaling deeply the oxygen of laughter, when she fetches JoJo for an outing, and yet also noting, “I learned early that the he makes a comically stilted little speech: best way to be alone with your thoughts is “I feel the need of something hot—some to be funny. Laughter is a curtain behind substantial refreshment.” It is typical of which you can live your own life and Powell to record his exact words, so that think as you please—sort of a sound bar- the moment, in all its tenderness and rier.” quirkiness, is not lost. Thanks to her pre- Powell loved New York, and her work cision, compassion, and verve—and to reflects an affectionate but unflinching the meticulous editing of Tim Page—a view of the city. Sociable, yet craving soli- lifetime of such moments may now be tude, she wrote: “People call you up till kept for good. finally they stop and then you call them.” Her fiction is peopled with hard-drinking > Richard Selzer is a former professor of surgery at men and women, many of them lonely, Yale University and the author, most recently, of not knowing where their next meal is Raising the Dead (1994). 78 WQ Spring 1996.
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